


The Sphinx

by Delphi



Series: Fantastic Beasts [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Marijuana, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 03:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which misanthropy is no impediment to friendship and Severus's dealer wears tweed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sphinx

The worst part of it, Severus had come to realise, was that life simply went on. Self-preservationist―all right, _coward_ ―that he was, he had gone to great lengths to keep himself out of Azkaban. However, in the very middle of the night, as he lay awake staring into the shadows of his bedroom, he often wondered if a life sentence with the Dementors wasn't the kinder fate. By report, one lived one’s worst memories in Azkaban, over and over again. Every wound was kept fresh, every loss newly ripped from one’s chest, every pain held close. The thought of it was comforting, in a certain way. At the very least, it was preferable to the insistent flow of time in which he found himself buoyed along.  
  
Each day that Hallowe'en fell further behind him, he was reminded once again that there was no turning back. He had never been one to accept his lot in life, and for weeks and then months, he had fought against the truth―against the knowledge that none of what had been done could be undone. These were no schoolboy crimes to be absolved with a week's detention. No apology would ever suffice. He was now a man who had grievously assaulted six innocent people, a man who had been culpable in the deaths of two, a man who had not been able to save the life of the girl he loved. There was no taking any of it back. There was no pretending it hadn’t happened. And week by week, month by month, and eventually year by year, this would comprise a larger and larger portion of his life, until perhaps someday there would be nothing more to who he was.  
  
The sun rose, and he ate, and he taught, and he graded. The sun set, and he slept in fits and starts, his mind churning dangerously through what-ifs and if-onlys. It was strange, he thought, that he could be surrounded by an almost unbearable quantity of people and yet feel so alone. He found that missed his friends terribly. The fact that he had betrayed almost all of them did not mean he did not feel the lack of their company, nor was he ultimately swayed by his distaste for what they had become; he simply missed them. He said hello to the headmaster and deputy headmistress over breakfast each morning. He lectured to his students. From time to time, he might exchange a nod with a colleague in the corridor. That was the extent of his human interactions.  
  
The only exception, oddly enough, was Professor Kettleburn. The flobberworms had been delivered in good order by Hagrid, but Severus was soon invited to the next week’s “office hours” to discuss future supplies, and when he turned up at the Hog’s Head that Friday afternoon, there was a draught cider waiting for him at the table.  
  
They drank in between companionable chat focused on the peculiarities of horklumps. Severus’s primary exposure to what he thought of as “animal people” was through the dragon fanatics and winged horse enthusiasts of his schooldays, and through an aunt who collected insistently for the Greater Cokeworth Feline Friends Society. To his pleasant surprise, however, Kettleburn was the scientific sort, more inclined to discussing a horklump’s chromosomal abnormalities than its precious placement in the chain of life.  
  
“I’ve been trying to get my hands on _Magical Mushrooms_ by G.S. Toksvig,” Severus complained, “but the library copy was stolen years ago, and Flourish and Blott’s can’t get it in stock.”  
  
Kettleburn stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You could petition Irma Pince to borrow it from the Diagon Alley Reading Room, but one of you might drop dead of old age first.” He paused. “Although I might have a copy in my possession. Would you care to borrow it?”  
  
Which was how Severus once again found himself sharing a carriage back to the castle with Kettleburn. They disembarked at the stables, where Kettleburn saw to the thestrals, and then they proceeded into the west wing, where they passed a group of students loitering in the corridor. Kettleburn ignored them, and Severus followed his example, overly conscious of his own gait beside the other man’s stilted steps.  
  
Although muffled by boots, Kettleburn’s prostheses made a queer click against the stone floor. They were not wooden, Severus deduced, but rather some sort of lightweight or hollow metal. He walked with surprising speed on level ground, but Severus had to slow considerably as they climbed up the stairs to the second floor. Idling, looking everywhere but at the source of his delay, Severus wondered why no one had thought to give the man an office on the ground floor.  
  
“You can have a look at the horklumps,” Kettleburn said as they made their way to Room 214. “They’ll need another week or so until they're fully mature, but they’re sprouting up nicely.”  
  
Kettleburn’s office was instantly appealing. It was dimly lit and smelled faintly like owl pellets, and almost every inch of it was piled with books or plastered with parchment. Three full walls were covered with bookshelves, and above the desk―which had its back to the room like a student’s―was an enormous corkboard upon which were pinned all manner of newspaper clippings, wildlife sketches, and zoological diagrams.  
  
“That’s them by the window,” Kettleburn said, rummaging through a stack of books that threatened to bury an armchair.  
  
Severus lifted the dark cloth that covered a large aquarium and peered in at the horklumps, which looked to be plump and healthy. He took note of their size and number, and then his attention strayed to an ink drawing pasted on the wall. A double helix twisted across the paper with small, irregularly shaped bubbles picked out in colour on the bars joining the curves.  
  
“Is that a nucleotide chain?" he asked, his memory offering up a blurry image from a childhood book on biology stolen from the Cokeworth library van.  
  
Kettleburn looked up from his rummaging and fixed him with an appraising look. “Yes. It's unicorn DNA. Well spotted.”  
  
Severus was not generally an admirer of art, but he could appreciate the neat symmetry of the drawing. “It looks like its horn.”  
  
“Entirely a coincidence. It’s virtually indistinguishable from most equine species, horned or otherwise. Although it's suspected to be a closer cousin to the zebra than to the common horse, if you can believe it. Ah, here we are.”  
  
Kettleburn held out a battered copy of _Magical Mushrooms_ , but drew it back when Severus reached for it.  
  
“Empty your pockets.”  
  
Severus frowned. “I beg your pardon?”  
  
“Your pockets. Empty them out on the desk, please.”  
  
Puzzled, Severus removed his watch, a Knut, a piece of lint, and his wand―the last of which he kept his hand on.  
  
Kettleburn snatched up his watch. “You can have this back when you return the book.”  
  
Severus drew himself up in indignation. “I’m not going to abscond with it.”  
  
“When you’ve made the mistake of lending a book to Filius Flitwick,” Kettleburn said, slipping Severus’s watch smoothly into his own pocket, “you will be a much less trusting soul.”  
  
Severus hesitated and then, fixing a professional briskness to his voice that he did not quite feel, said: "I'll need the horklumps in September next year."  
  
He had not in fact discussed his changes to the curriculum with anyone; he had not even ascertained that he was allowed to make them, or that he would indeed still be employed come autumn. Working on the new coursework had been something to occupy him on sleepless nights, however, and he had grown attached to the project.  
  
Kettleburn regarded him with mild curiosity. "I thought Unveiling Philtres were always scheduled in January."  
  
"I've made some adjustments to the curriculum." Severus fidgeted with his satchel, where his curriculum notes currently rested. "I don't suppose you would...have time to look at it? For the purposes of scheduling, I mean."  
  
Kettleburn shrugged and lowered himself into his desk chair. He cleared a heap of papers off the blotter and then patted it imperiously. "Let's have it."  
  
Severus handed over the sheaf of notes and hovered uncomfortably as Kettleburn peered at the pages.  
  
"Hm," Kettleburn muttered as he scanned the pages. "No, that won't do."  
  
Severus's shoulders tightened.  
  
"No, no, this would have to go."  
  
He frowned.  
  
"Rubbish."  
  
His hands clenched.  
  
"And Jawbind Potions in first year? Too dangerous. Not a chance."  
  
Severus opened his mouth. Had he slept at all the night before, he might have been wise enough to subsequently shut it. As it was, his raw temper flared, and the words left his lips before he could stop them: "They're hardly on the level of―”  
  
He bit down hard and managed to stop himself in time, but Kettleburn had already looked up sharply and was regarding him with new interest. "Not on the level of what?"  
  
"Nothing," Severus said quickly.  
  
Kettleburn's lips curved into a small, amused smile. "Finish your sentence, please."  
  
On the armchair, burrowed in between two stacks of books and hidden under a cloak, the little crup began to growl.  
  
"Mouse," Kettleburn chided, and the growling subsided. Then he inclined his head towards Severus. "Please, I insist."  
  
Jaw clenched, cheeks red, Severus spat it out. "It's hardly on the level of losing one's legs to dragons during a practical demonstration. Look, I didn't mean―"  
  
Kettleburn cut him off. "It was a Nundu," he said mildly, "and it was entirely on my own time. Prior to my employment here, in fact."  
  
Severus reached to snatch up his notes, but Kettleburn blocked him, holding up his hand. "Now this..." He fanned his brass fingers. "...was indeed a classroom demonstration gone awry. A student who will go unnamed, but who is to my great consternation currently occupying quite a prominent position in government, attempted to pat a unicorn. Unicorns do not like objects moving suddenly towards their heads, as it happens. Or objects getting between themselves and the object moving suddenly towards their heads."  
  
Severus said nothing. He tried not to stare at the burnished metal.  
  
"You'll have it easier on that front. While Potions are a fascinating subject, I very much doubt that anyone ever wanted to have a pet Dizzying Draught as a child. They come into my class, each of them secretly certain that beasts possess the full range of human emotion, and that all that's required to tame the wild is purity of heart. Still, our jobs are rather similar. This curriculum is surprisingly solid if you want to turn out a class full of Class Five brewers. Unfortunately, that task is alike to crafting a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Let the future Class Fives study on their own time. What you want to turn out is a class full of children who are not going to accidentally blow themselves up."  
  
Severus scowled. That did, admittedly, seem better in line with his current appraisal of his students.  
  
Kettleburn was silent a moment, and then he chuckled. "Dragons? Plural? Really?"  
  
The heat surged in Severus's cheeks as the ridiculousness dawned on him. "I was only repeating what I heard," he said stiffly.  
  
"What else do they say about me?" Rather than sounding offended, Kettleburn seemed pleased at the notion of being discussed.  
  
All the idle common room gossip came rushing back to Severus with embarrassing speed and childishness. He had never been entirely convinced as a student that any of his teachers were actually human beings and thus had rarely questioned even the most ludicrous allegations.  
  
"Oh come now, Snape," Kettleburn said. "This is an almost unprecedented opportunity. Let's call it a trade, hm? You tell me what the students say about me, and I'll tell you what the rest of the staff are saying about you."  
  
Severus's eyes narrowed. "Who's saying things? What are they saying?"  
  
Kettleburn spread his hands. "You first."  
  
Reluctantly, Severus cleared his throat. "Well, there were the dragons, of course," he muttered. "And I believe you lost your fingers trying to retrieve a Sickle from a niffler."  
  
He steeled himself when Kettleburn looked at him expectantly.  
  
"Don't hold back."  
  
Severus rolled his eyes. "You're a...bestialist. Apparently."  
  
Kettleburn stared blankly for a moment, obviously trying to make sense of the word. Then he threw his head back and laughed. It was a startlingly loud and pleasant sound. "Oh, of course! I'd have thought they said I'd lost my John Thomas."  
  
"A Lobalug bit it off," Severus said dryly, his mouth twitching.  
  
Kettleburn laughed again, a great whoop that sent his chair tilting back on its hind legs. "A fine object lesson, I'm sure. I find myself on probation every year, you realise, for delivering a lecture titled Why We Do Not Experiment Sexually With Animals Even If They Cannot Tell On You."  
  
Severus snorted despite himself. "Your turn now."  
  
"Don't worry, I'm as good as my word. It's nothing as exciting as Lobalugs, but you've been the topic of many a conversation. It's so rare that anyone your age takes a job at Hogwarts, you know. Seven members of staff are of the opinion that it's love gone wrong."  
  
The convivial air died abruptly. "I beg your pardon?"  
  
"Why you're here, and why you're so..." Kettleburn made a vague motion in his direction. "...saturnine. You lost someone in the war, or you were jilted, or you have some defect of character that will forever keep you from lawful marriage."  
  
Severus's hands went cold. "What about the rest?"  
  
"The rest are holding their peace. Which means they think you're a Hagrid Hire."  
  
"A what?"  
  
"A Hagrid Hire. You've done something terrible and Albus has all the dirt on you, so he's hired you on for sub-standard pay for his own secretive purposes."  
  
Kettleburn smiled amiably, as if it were a joke, and Severus attempted to mirror it. He could not actually feel his face.  
  
"I don't suppose," Kettleburn said, "you're going to confide in me as to which it is."  
  
Severus swallowed, or tried to. His mouth was very dry. "Who's to say that I haven't caught out Professor Dumbledore in something equally terrible and blackmailed him into providing me with three meals and a pension?"  
  
"Ah." Kettleburn's smiled widened, and he tilted his head up, looking at Severus for a moment too long. "Then you would be a very interesting man to get to know."  
  
Severus returned the horklump terrarium a week after it had been delivered to him, having cleaned it out after class with the energy of a man who had just restrained himself from throttling twenty-three students who were apparently incapable of following the simplest directions. It was only afterwards that he realised he could have assigned the worst offenders―those who had actually melted their cauldrons―to do the cleaning for him, and only realised after he had hauled the terrarium up three flights of stairs that he could have asked Hagrid to bring it back.  
  
His arms were burning by the time he reached Kettleburn's door, and his head was pounding. He set the terrarium down hard, and at the clunk of it, noises stirred inside the office. If he had been sharper, he might have been around the corner and down the stairs in the slow time it took Kettleburn to get to his feet and reach the door. It had been a long day, however, and instead Severus waited, managing a polite grimace of a smile when the door opened a crack.  
  
The suspicious grey eye peering out un-narrowed, and Kettleburn opened the door fully. "Professor Snape―what a pleasant surprise."  
  
Severus looked down at the terrarium with a sigh before crouching down and hoisting it up again.  
  
Kettleburn shuffled back, clearing the way for him. "This is exactly why we needed new blood around the place. We've a lack of strapping young men."  
  
Severus's ears went hot at what he assumed was meant to be joke, and he rolled his eyes as he carried the enclosure back to the window ledge it had previously occupied. Kettleburn was fruitlessly trying to tidy up behind him, and Severus could not help but steal another glance or three at the papers that plastered the walls. His own office was still ill-fitting and Spartan, like a shell he might never grow into. He wondered if hanging up his notes would somehow help.  
  
There was a large chart next to the window. On it were two columns, one labelled _Homo sapiens sapiens_ , the other, _Homo sapiens magi_. There were several dozen narrow rows intersecting the columns, which in turn were named things like _Situation 1.3_ , _Situation 6.2_ , and _Situation 8 Revisited_. The dots in each field swam before his eyes, and he looked away, noticing this time how much of the work on the walls seemed to be related to the Nundu.  
  
There was a photograph pinned between two zoological drawings of the large, leopard-like creature. In it, a strangely shaped tree stood a great distance away, and as Severus stared, it soon became apparent that what he had at first taken for its upper boughs was in fact an enormous animal lying across its branches. The wind blew the grassland in slow waves, and the creature shifted, a dark and nearly formless shadow.  
  
"―leep?"  
  
Severus blinked. He did not know how long he had been staring dumbly at the photograph, and he turned around to find Kettleburn regarding him with concern.  
  
"I beg your pardon?" he asked.  
  
The shallow frown deepened. "I said, do you ever sleep? Or do you abstain on religious grounds?"  
  
Severus swallowed. His throat made an unpleasant clicking sound. "Of course I sleep."  
  
In truth, he knew what he looked like. He felt what he looked like. His eyelids grated, and his lips were dry and peeling, and he had of late become pallid enough that the veins on the backs of his hands stood out in vivid blue.  
  
Kettleburn opened up a desk drawer and removed from it a small wooden box. He unlatched the box and drew out something small and white.  
  
"What's that?" Severus asked, looking at what appeared to be a hand-rolled cigarette.  
  
"Cannabis indica."  
  
A sceptical moment passed, and then incredulous laughter bubbled in Severus's chest. Despite falling in with what could, to put it mildly, be termed the wrong crowd, Severus had never partaken of anything stronger than alcohol. Having outgrown both Cokeworth and the Slytherin dormitories, he had not expected his first sampling of drugs to be offered to him by someone in a tweed waistcoat.  
  
"It's medicinal," Kettleburn said soberly. "For management of pain."  
  
"I'm not in any pain," Severus said.  
  
Kettleburn did not reply―he only held the thing out until Severus reluctantly took it and slipped it into his pocket to avoid further conversation.  
  
"You'll want to make sure Professor Sprout doesn't find out you have it," Severus said, not liking the way Kettleburn was looking at him and urged to fill the silence as he edged towards the door. "She used to be a fiend for tearing up the student patches. Or replacing it with stinging nettle."  
  
Kettleburn, however, only chuckled softly as Severus saw himself out. "Who do you think grows it for me?"  
  
The cigarette stayed in Severus's pocket for a day, and in a drawer for three. He meant to dispose of it, but destroying evidence was not a priority amidst the grind of lecturing and grading and of lying awake in the darkness all night dissecting his memories. His headache persisted, however, and one evening when the throbbing was bad enough that he thought he might be sick from it, he settled into the chair in front of the fire and lit the thing.  
  
The smoke tasted green and heavy. It hung warmly on his tongue and trickled down his throat. For the better part of ten minutes, Severus doubted that it was having any real effect on him, but when he moved to take off his boots, he could feel the new weight of his limbs. The tension in his head eased for the first time in weeks; he could almost perceive the constriction of his own blood vessels. His thoughts slowed, and he eventually put out the fag-end before it could burn down to his fingers. Mustering the initiative to stand up was a trial, but it was worth it when he had changed into his nightshirt and sunk into bed. The cool sheets embraced him, and he closed his eyes.  
  
He slept until morning.  
  
The next time they met, it was Kettleburn who sought him out. Severus was holed up in his office on a Saturday attempting to put a quiz together when he heard the now familiar tap of a walking stick, accompanied by heavy footsteps.  
  
Severus waited for them to pass, but they paused directly outside his door a moment before three sharp knocks startled him upright in his chair.  
  
“Come in,” he said, just a touch warily. The only other members of staff who had visited him in his office unannounced were Professor Dumbledore, who made no effort to hide the fact that he was checking up on him, no matter how nice a tea tray he brought, and Professor McGonagall, who insisted on offering firm advice on the pedagogical process every time he gave one of her Gryffindors a detention.  
  
Kettleburn let himself in, shutting the door behind him and looking around the office with interest.  
  
“I thought you had taken over Horace’s office, but Mr. Filch was kind enough to redirect me before I found myself too lost.”  
  
A wry smile tilted the man’s mouth, and his head cocked to the side, making Severus listen hard to hear the unmistakable sound of someone very thoroughly sweeping a very small patch of stone that happened to be right in front of Severus's office door.  
  
“I preferred something closer to my apartments,” he said. Truth be told, it had simply been too strange to move into Professor Slughorn’s office, or his rooms. The memory of sitting on the other side of the desk, or worse, perching awkwardly on the settee at a gathering was still too fresh.  
  
“Very sensible,” Kettleburn said. "How are you finding the Toksvig?"  
  
Kettleburn's visit suddenly made sense. Severus riffled through his desk and found the copy of _Magical Mushrooms_.  
  
"I've been meaning to return it to you," he said. "I finished it yesterday."  
  
Kettleburn, sure enough, happened to be carrying Severus's watch in his pocket. He inspected the book for any damage and then handed over the watch accordingly. He did not leave, however, but looked around the room again before clearing his throat.  
  
“There isn't much in the way of sunlight down here, is there? What do you say to a trip into town?”  
  
Severus frowned, taken aback. “I don’t have any business in town.”  
  
“Ah, but I do,” Kettleburn said, “and unfortunately Rolanda has pressing work and can’t accompany me.”  
  
“Rolanda?”  
  
“Rolanda Hooch. You must know her. About yea high, striking eyes, rather mad about Quidditch?”  
  
Severus tried to sort that out, wondering for a brief moment if the two were involved romantically. He could not picture it. “You’re going into the village. And Madam Hooch can’t accompany you. So I’m your Plan B?”  
  
“Second choice out of twenty potential consenting adults,” Kettleburn said. “Some might be flattered.”  
  
“And I suppose going alone isn’t an option?”  
  
Kettleburn adjusted the neat cravat knotted around his neck. It was an oddly arresting motion. “I could, admittedly, use some assistance with my parcels.”  
  
Which was how Severus, not particularly inclined to feeling like a complete and utter cad on a perfectly good Saturday, ended up toting several bags of books and other supplies down the high street of Hogsmeade Village. To be fair, three of the books and one of the bags from Scrivenshaft’s were his, and he had been treated to lunch at Madam Pudifoot’s besides.  
  
“You need a bigger dog,” he noted as they made their way back to the carriage.  
  
“Hm?” Professor Kettleburn looked at him with puzzled interest.  
  
The crup, Mouse, was trotting along ahead of them, holding in her mouth a small bag of scones from the tea shop.  
  
“A bigger dog. To carry more of your things for you.”  
  
He had been idly thinking of seeing-eye dogs, but Kettleburn laughed as if he had said something truly clever and briefly touched his arm.  
  
“Do you know, I shall keep that in mind.”


End file.
